I notice the Socket-754 GA-K8NSNXP is now off the list, but the 939 version is still there. It shouldn't be on the list either, or at the very least have a special mention that the NV MAC port is 10/100 only, and that the Gigabit port does NOT use the NV MAC.

Wesley-all the other boards are OK. Post 15 summed it up nicely. I assume that the plain 250 has a built-in 10/100 MAC which explains the ICS PHY on the K8NSNXP. It's use on the Ultra defies explanation though. I can only assume that they wanted to get an Ultra board out before anyone so the just recycled the 250 board design and dropped in the Ultra chip.

Incidentally, back when the Intel ICH4 was big news for it's integrated features, Gigabyte did the exact same thing by bypassing them all in favor of PCI components.Reply

In other words, I think GigaByte should be off the "uses NVidia GbE" list entirely.

Again, I don't think what GigaByte did here was cool at all; If you buy a board that says "NForce3-Ultra", and you see a Gigabit Ethernet port, you ought to be able to assume it's the well-advertised NVidia Gigabit Ethernet with the dedicated port to the northbridge, not some bandwidth starved PCI-based solution.
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The GA-K8NSNXP for 754 uses the standard Nforce3-250 that doesn't have the Gigabit port; so they stick the ICS-1883 PHY on the NForce3, and add the Marvell Gigabit controller to the PCI bus.

For socket 939, the GA-K8NSNXP-939, they switch to the NForce3-Ultra, but don't change anything else on the board. So oddly, the on-chip Gigabit-capable ethernet port is still linked to the ICS-1883 10/100 PHY, and the Marvel Gigabit LAN still links to the 33Mhz 32-bit PCI bus (much too slow for Gigabit Ethermet, SATA controller, firewire and PCI slots!)

Piss-poor execution I say. Would it have been that hard to switch out the ICS 1883 PHY for a Gigabit capable one? They could leave the Marvel one alone, and offer Dual-Gigabit at essentially the same price.
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The PHY is the physical layer of the networking; it generates the signal, while the chipset is the controller or brains of the outfit. The PHY part has the MAC address on it, so figure layer 2.

The Gigabyte K8NSNXP or the 939 version uses both a Marvell controller on the PCI bus but also 10/100 ethernet from the NF3250 controller, not on the pci bus. So yes, while it does use the nvidia Lan via a PHY, it's not Gb.Reply

As you can see, the gigabit chip is crammed onto the PCI bus with a bunch of other high-bandwidth stuff. The same holds true for their 754 board. Either nVidia or Gigabyte needs to get their facts straight here.Reply

nVidia's response is pretty standard. What I mean is, why would a company use the version of the chipset that adds Gigabit LAN (and the firewall it offers) only to NOT use it? It beats me why Gigabyte did it.

I wonder, is VIA's Gigabit lan on the PCI bus? They call it "VIA Velocity™ Gigabit Ethernet
(PCI companion controller)".

#2,
there's also the MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum. That one is already available on newegg.

gtech41 - Do you disagree about any others that nVidia listed, or are the Gigabyte boards your only concern? I have forwarded your comments to nVidia and asked for clarification, since the 'Ultra" logo is definitely used in Gigabyte packaging.

We published the list and information nVidia sent us in response to our questions about which boards had on-chip LAN and how our readers could tell for themselves. Reply

#4-You can't use an external LAN conrroller, just an external physical layer. Go to Marvell's website and look at the difference beteween the chip used on the Gigabyte boards and the one used on the Asus.Reply

The nVidia list of models is confusing given that we generally use the names and not the model numbers everywhere else. http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?mode... says the K8N Neo2 Platinum is MSI Part No: MS-7025-010 (also says this board has the nVidia nForce 3 Ultra chip)

Also teased by the August 2 listing for the DFI NF3-250Gb Infinity. It even farther from releasing than the MSI K8N_Neo2_Platinum. (Wish my second machine had waited a few more weeks to blow up)Reply

I don't know why I'm hearing so much about this nForce 3 onboard Gigabit LAN. I bought the MSI K8N Neo Platinum board and had nothing but problems with the on board LAN. I disabled the firewall through the BIOS and still wasn't able to use it with Bittorrent Clients, Gamespy and Xbconnect. I ended up installing my old 3Com card and everything works perfectly. I hope NVIDIA has some new drivers soon.Reply

sorry log post; didn't the article say that a 250 Gb or Ultra could have an external LAN chip that was still removed from the PCI bus which was the same end result? I looked up the Gigabyte board and saw the same thing as #1 did and I'm a little confused though, NewEgg lists the K8NSNXP as 250 vanilla, can we clear this up?Reply

On a related note, there is at least one motherboard for the Socket A family that also has nVidia Gbit LAN and firewall, namely the EPoX 8RDA6+Pro. This mobo uses the new nF2 Ultra400+Gigabit MCP. People not yet ready to make the jump to AMD64 can stick with Athlon and still enjoy these new features. See http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/epox/8rda6+pro/g1....Reply

Neither Gigabyte board uses the on-chip GB LAN. The
k8nsnxp uses only the basic 250, while the 939 uses the Marvell 8001 PCI controller (not the 88E111 PHY like the Asus or MSI). Both also use the ICS 1883 PHY for for a second LAN port, but that's just a 10/100 link to the chipset. Easy way to tell-look at the drivers. If any LAN controller uses drivers other than nVidia's unified ones then it's a PCI part. Reply